Movies have a rating system to help guide the consumer weed out adult/violent/inappropriate knds of films. Video games do, too. Do you think BOOKS should have a ratings system?

I’m not sure they should have ratings but I do think there should be trigger warnings. I personally don’t like reading books with rape scenes or mentions of rape. It’s uncomfortable to read and I can understand why it can be necessary for the story. Most of the time I have no warning if there is one, unless a friend has read the book previously and warns me. I think that books should have warnings if certain topics like rape, suicide, self-harm, etc. are mentioned because they can be really triggering to some people. And some books have them when you wouldn’t expect it based solely on the synopsis. I put those warnings on my reviews (well for rape and sexual assault, but if I do read a book with suicide or self-harm I will probably put a warning on that too). I know there are some people that don’t want to read adult novels with explicit sex scenes so I guess having ratings for books wouldn’t be a bad idea. But then you get into the idea of how should we rate them and who gets to be in charged of deciding what kind of rating they have and I know from my LGBT classes that movies with gay characters used to be rated harshly because of certain people’s opinion.

But, ramble aside, I do think there should be warnings for triggers on books because sometimes it isn’t fun having a rape scene sneak up on you in the middle of a good read and it can definitely change your mood and how you feel about the book with just that one scene.